Tagged: Progressive Field

It was a Friday at Progressive Field, and it was brutally cold, with temps in the mid 40’s. Originally, I had planned to go to Baltimore today and stay overnight and see the Athletics there on Friday and Saturday, but after some consultation with fellow ballhawk Nick Pelescak, we decided to go to Cleveland instead as it was the cheaper option.

When the gates opened, I got on the board early thanks to Indians closer Chris Perez. As I was unsuccessfully looking for an easter egg, Perez fielded a ball in center field. I called out to him and he threw me the ball to put me on the board. It had a BP Gas stamp on it, meaning that I can redeem the ball for a gas card by having a representative cross out the stamp.
My second ball of the day was a home run that took a crazy bounce in the front row and shot right at me. It was over my head, so I stabbed at it with my glove and made the catch on the ricochet. It was a reflex type play.

Ball #3 was a home run to center field that bounced in the aisle and took a large hop towards the Progressive car. There wasn’t anyone else around so I scurried up the steps and picked it up.
My fourth ball came from Indians ace Ubaldo Jimenez. Jimenez finished a side session and walked out of the bullpen. Several people asked him for a ball, including myself, but he ignored everyone. Just as he was about to disappear out of view, he looked back. The other fans had turned their attention back to the field, but I hadn’t, so I held up my glove – and he tossed me his warm up ball for my fourth of the day.
Ball #5 was a ground rule double that I fielded in center field. I just shuffled through an open row and caught it as it bounced off of the warning track.
That was it for the Indians. When the Angels came out, I was expecting a lot of home run balls to be hit to center field, since they are a right handed heavy line up. That really wasn’t the case though. The Angels didn’t hit much of anything to center field that had home run distance.

As BP got underway, I tried to get a ball from a pitcher, but the last place Angels, who have been in turmoil were pretty unfriendly when it came to tossing up baseballs.
After a long drought, I caught a home run on the fly in center field off the bat of who I believe is Mark Trumbo after looking at his batting stance on mlbtv. I caught it here:
Ball #7 was a home run ball that landed in the trees in Heritage Park.

That was just before 6PM. At 6, the whole stadium opened, and I made my way over to left field. An unknown righty hit a home run to my right that I tried to catch, but couldn’t quite get to. In left field there are steep steps and bleachers all over the place, so its difficult to navigate quickly. The ball landed here:
Luckily, it rolled underneath the riser that the seats are on, so I just reached underneath and grabbed it.

I could tell that batting practice was about to end, so I hustled to the Angels dugout, the Angels finished before I got to the dugout, but I got there just in time to yell out ‘DINO!’ towards one of their coaches. It was Dino Ebel, their third base coach. He looked at me and smiled, and then turned away to put a few baseballs away. He then turned back and tossed me ball #9. Luckily I looked over the coaches list when I made my roster. Dino is unmistakeable because he’s rather gaunt. Seems like a cool guy though.
I only needed one more for double digits, but we didn’t hang around, we made the drive back to Pittsburgh with plans on heading to Baltimore the following day.

It was a Wednesday in Cleveland, and there were only 10,552 fans to attend this game. There were maybe 100 people there during batting practice. You’d think it would be a good day.

The wind was blowing in pretty well from center field, so home runs would be few and far between.
During the Indians batting practice I got three balls.

One from Chris Perez, who’s the friendliest pitcher in the major leagues:
One was a home run by Carlos Santana that was over my head and I nearly caught, except that it tipped off my glove as I jumped for it. No matter, there was no one else around, so I merely picked it up.

And a third ball was a ground rule double that settled in the second row that I beat out a gloveless fan for.
When the Royals came out, I expected to be able to catch a few homers from their lefties and get a few tossups since there was only one other fan in the park wearing Royals gear.

I went over to the bullpen and watched coach Chino Cadahia warm up with Steve Foster. When they were done, I asked Foster for the ball, but he ignored me and put the ball in the ballbag. Chino saw the snub and went to his bag and pulled out a baseball and tossed it to me.
When the Royals pitchers were done throwing, Jose Mijares tossed me ball #5.
The Royals lefties hit 2 home runs the entire BP. None came close to me. To make matters worse, it seemed that most Royals pitchers, except for Bruce Chen were in a terrible mood. The Royals you see, had lost 12 in a row heading into this game, so they weren’t feeling too generous.

By the way, this is what the stands looked like near the end of the Royals BP:
I figured that I could head over to left field or the dugout to try and get a ball, but the Royals cut their BP short, running off the field at 5:51. Fans are restricted to right field only until 6PM on weekdays. So, when the whole stadium opened, the Royals were long gone, and so were all the easter eggs thanks to Cleveland’s staff.

Five baseballs is alright, but I was hoping for a few more based on the low crowd. Oh well. This was game one of two in Cleveland this week…

I went to Progressive Field on Monday, despite an iffy forecast of afternoon showers. When we arrived, it looked as if it could start raining at any moment.
At one point I felt a drop or two, but the rain never materialized, and the Indians took early batting practice, which I watched with Amy, Olivia, and Nick from just outside the Toyota Home Run Porch.
There were several balls that landed in the seats, but the ushers would later pick most of them up later and pocket them for themselves.

Before the gates opened, Nick and I played catch. It was about the fifth consecutive day that I had thrown, and my arm was feeling it. I threw a lot sidearm or 3/4 because my arm was sore.
When the gates opened, I ran in and found nothing.

After a long dry spell to start BP, an Indian hit a ball into the trees at Heritage Park, which I just reached in and grabbed to put me on the board:

My second ball was a clean home run catch here:
And ball #3 was a clean home run catch here on the fly:
which resulted in me being booed because a twelve year old was two rows in front of me, and the ball sailed over his glove by a foot and into mine. I didn’t give him the ball, and he and his dad ended up getting at least four that I saw, since there was no one there.

That was it for the Indians BP. The White Sox BP was pretty bad, as it featured a majority of right handed batters. To make it just a little more difficult, all of the Sox players had pullovers on, so I could only really identify a few of their players such as John Danks and Will Ohman. Plus, a trainer’s son was snagging 85% of the balls in right center, so not a lot of players were snagging flies near the outfield fence for me to put a request in.

I got shut out until 6PM when I found ball #4 in the left field bleachers. Somehow an usher missed it, as it was tucked neatly under a bleacher near a support.

Ball #5 was a disaster. I hate snagging in left field because its so steep. Tyler Flowers, a young catcher with a ton of power hit a home run at me. I started running up the steps in the bleachers, thinking it was way over my head. As I turned to find the ball, the struck me square in the back, bounced around, and rolled down a few rows, where I picked it up. It should’ve been an easy catch for me, but I botched it. I had wanted a Flowers ball, so I guess I should be happy that I at least got one, but still, I feel like I’m off to a rusty start to the 2012 season.

At 6:10, the White Sox ended BP, clearing the field, except for the infielders. In a rare scene, the Sox took infield practice.
It began with the coach hitting balls to the outfielders and working on cutting throws, then it progressed to double plays, etc. It was pretty cool to watch. I stood right behind the dugout and waited.
There were no other White Sox fans around, so I figured I had a good shot to get a ball.

It worked, as Mark Salas tossed me a well worn ball that had been used in infield practice for ball #6.

After BP, I got Amy and I some fried cookie dough:
Not a bad trip to Cleveland. I wish I could get here more often.

I headed to Cleveland this morning along with Amy, Olivia, and fellow ballhawk Nick Pelescak. We left around 7:45 and after searching for affordable parking, got to the gates around 10:20, over an hour before they were to open.

The game was a 1:05 day game, and Progressive Field only opens 90 minutes open for day games, meaning that if there was batting practice, we’d miss half of it. It was a gamble, but it was worth taking as it’s early in the season.

The plan was to go there, and hope for loads of Easter Eggs that would be left behind by the Indians batters. I peered in and saw that the Indians were indeed hitting.
Nice, there would be Easter Eggs everywhere. Nick and I walked over to the Home Run porch and watched ball after ball land in the right field seats. Unfortunately, there was an usher pretending to wipe off seats who was going around and pocketing them all.

It was important to get on the board early, because we were going to get an abbreviated batting practice with the late gate times, and also there was a huge crowd lined up to get in.
All of the gates opened at 11:30, and I ran in. As I was looking for an Easter Egg, a home run landed a section to my right. I ran over to pick it up, as the only person around was an usher who was acting like he was wiping off seats. Well, the usher sprinted for the ball and grabbed it before I could. Perhaps realizing how over the top it was, he looked at it and then flipped it to me to put me on the board.

I found a second ball in the seats a few rows back before heading over to left field.
I should mention that the visiting Blue Jays were already hitting when the gates opened, so we missed at least half of BP.

I hate Progressive Field’s left field. It’s dangerously steep, and I always do poorly there. After getting shut out for a round, I headed back to right field.

While there, I watched a ball bounce into the trees in Heritage Park. I ran over and found it sitting just under the fence that separates the trees from the monuments.
In the Jays third group, which was all lefties, I caught a home run on the fly cleanly here:
And less than 20 seconds later corralled another home run that bounced off the concrete partition between the outfield wall and front row of seats here:
I failed to get anything else during batting practice. I thought I had a sixth one that I saw go into the trees at Heritage Park, but after a thorough search, I gave up. There were a couple teenagers there looking for the same ball, but none of us found it. After BP, I returned and systematically scanned every inch of the area behind this wall:
Eventually, I found it after BP had ended when I searched a second time. It was right up against the concrete out of view. It was my sixth and final ball of the day.

I snapped a photo of this Jim Thome mural,
and then we took off before game time. There was another batting practice to get to 2 hours away in Pittsburgh…

The Cleveland Indians still haven’t posted their 2012 Game Times on their website, which is very frustrating to those of us who are trying to plan our season schedule. The Pirates released their game times over a month ago, as did many other teams. Luckily, I was able to figure out the Indians 2012 game times by poking around on Ticketmaster. The only thing that concerns me is that the game time for all Saturday games is 6:05 rather than 7:05. Hopefully the Indians will open their gates at 3:30 rather than 4:30. Does anyone have any info on Saturday opening times? I’m looking at attending about six Saturday games there this year.

Anyhow, here are the 2012 Progressive Field Cleveland Indians Game Times for those of you that want to get planning and are tired of waiting for the website to update:

I decided to head to Cleveland after work today. Originally, I would’ve liked to have attended yesterday’s too, but I wasn’t feeling well and fellow ballhawk Nick Pelescak was already in Cleveland and reported a rained out batting practice on Wednesday.

I left work and drove to Cleveland and didn’t get there until 4:50 PM. Batting practice had began at 4:30. When I arrived, I had a few bad breaks and didn’t snag anything for the first twenty minutes I was there. I didn’t even get to see the good Indians batters like Hafner, Thome, Santana or Sizemore. I was regretting even going. Why did I go? Well, I wanted to move up another spot on this list and make my 2011 season a top 5 season. By that I mean, the number of balls that I snagged would be fifth all time.

Last year I was the all time single season record holder with 544 before Zack Hample blew by me with a 30 stadium 130 game season.

Here’s the list:
My first ball of the day was a ball that bounced into the trees in Heritage Park. I ran over and found the ball waiting just under the wall, so I reached in and grabbed it before an usher came rushing down and started looking for it as well. I had already grabbed it, so I just left. Since when do ushers try to get balls out of the trees in Heritage Park?
My second ball of the day was a nice catch that took some effort. An Indians blasted a home run to my right. I ran up about seven rows and cut across into an empty row and caught it on the fly backhanded here:
The White Sox BP typically sucks in Cleveland because they don’t have too many good lefties, and all fans are confined to right field until 6PM on weekdays. Not a good combination. However, I had some more luck.

I caught an Adam Dunn home run on the fly here:
I had to leap to make the catch, and there were two other ballhawks jostling for position on the ball a row or two back.

Ball #4 of the day was completely lucky and random. Will Ohman fielded a ball near the wall and flipped it up over his shoulder without looking. I was standing four rows deep right here:
And the ball was directly to me. I didn’t have to budge an inch. Later in BP, Ohman screamed at the crowd that he would get the balls on the field and keep them, and if they wanted a ball to catch a home run. There were dozens and dozens of kids screaming ‘HERE HERE HERE’ on every ball that was hit to right field. I can see why he was annoyed. Even more annoying, is that it pretty much ruined it for everyone. The White Sox pretty much completely stopped throwing balls into the crowd for the rest of BP.

My fifth ball of the day was glove tricked out of the Indians bullpen. It was a home run hit by Adam Dunn that settled right below me.
Piece of cake.

At 6:00, I had thought about running over and getting a ball about 12 rows up in left field that all of the ushers had missed, but Nick Pelescak was going to be going for the same ball, so I decided to instead head into foul territory at 6.

There was some major competition there, as a big line of people, including several ballhawks rushed in to the seats. In my haste, I dropped my Cleveland Stick. I had a decided that I would run down and see if there’s any Easter Eggs, and then come back and grab it a minute later.

When I ran over I found ball #6. It wasn’t just any ball though… It was an Angels 50th Anniversary Commemorative Ball. Rare.
And weird, since neither of the teams had recently played the Angels. The White Sox played them last on August 24th.

I then went back to grab my Cleveland Stick but it was gone. Someone had stolen it. Or threw it away. It was a terrible loss. If you’re new to this blog, I use the Cleveland Stick to snag unreachable balls out of Heritage Park like this one:
Luckily today was my final game in Cleveland, so I’ll have a new device for next year.

After having no luck in left field, I made my way over to the White Sox dugout and waited for batting practice to be over. I usually never do this, but I couldn’t pass it up. Look how many White Sox fans were waiting to greet the team as they ran off the field:
Yeah. None.

As a result, I got third base coach to toss me ball #7. He’s about to duck into the dugout in the picture below (between the two fans):
After snagging my seventh ball, I left thereby closing the book on Cleveland for the 2011 season.
I made it home at exactly 9 PM and Amy and I watched the Season Premier of The Office.

In my original schedule of games that I planned on attending, I had penned in five consecutive games in Cleveland this week, Tuesday through Saturday. However, with a new baby and new house, I was only able to make one game. I chose Friday, simply because the Twins have a bevy of left handed hitters, and the rest of the stadium opens at 5:30, thereby thinning out the crowd in right field a half hour earlier than during the week.

I had some issues on the way to Cleveland, as my car overheated (see the gauge up at the H?) and I had to stop and get coolant at a WalMart.
Therefore, I wasn’t first in line, I was ninth. To make matters worse, at 4:30, when the gates were to open – the supervisor realized that he didn’t have the scanners for the tickets. This caused a seven minute delay, meaning I would miss most of the Indians first, and best hitting group.
When the gates did open, the nine people in front of me (five of which had gloves) dilly-dallied getting batting practice T-Shirts – which are given away to the first 100 fans each day. This provided me an opportunity to run around them and be the first one to enter the seating area.

I immediately found two balls in the front row in right field. The first of which had a BP stamp on it.
While standing in line I overheard an Indians fan talking about the BP stamped balls and saying that they could be turned in for gift cards or something. After BP was over, I found THIS article with information about the BP balls, but it was pretty vague, so I’m still wondering what to do when the green stamped balls. Any help? Anyone?

There were a few people running around looking for baseballs, so I ran over to Heritage Park with another ballhawk on my tail and spotted ball #3 within reach just under the wall that separates the Heritage Park monuments from the trees. I reached in and grabbed it without having time to snap a picture.

I returned to the seats to play for home run balls, but not for long, as Travis Hafner blasted one into the trees in Heritage Park. I ran back over and used the Cleveland stick to snag that one.
When the first group wrapped things up around 4:45, I checked the bullpens for baseballs and noticed a real easy one in the visitors bullpen. I glove tricked that ball for ball #5,
and a few minutes later got Chris Perez to toss me ball #6 in center field.
I had only been there about twenty minutes to that point and had already snagged six baseballs. My goal coming into the game was nine, which would’ve given me 250 career balls at Progressive Field, but things slowed way down after that.

The Indians BP sucked the rest of the way, and the Twins had only really one decent group. It was their second group, which featured Justin Morneau, Jim Thome, and Jason Kubel. Those guys wore out the two sections closest to the visitors bullpen with baseballs.
Unfortunately, I was only able to snag one on the fly – a clean catch of a Thome home run for ball #7. I had a lot of close calls, so I headed over to left field for the last group, but failed to snag anything.
I also tried the dugout after batting practice, but all of the balls that were tossed into the crowds went to kids.
So, I went home – and a two hour and 15 minute trip ended up taking about three and a half? Why? Well, because my car overheated three times.

It’s not supposed to look like that under the hood:
Coolant was spraying out somewhere, and I have an obvious radiator problem. The third time I stopped I basically broke down, as my car started clunking and smoking.
After letting it sit for awhile and adding more coolant and water to the radiator, I was able to make it home, but just barely.

I have an appointment to take my car into the shop on Monday, which means that I won’t be able to make batting practice unless I can get a ride. So, are there any other ballhawks that would be interested in giving me a ride to/from batting practice? I’ll pay you. $20. That’s like a half tank of gas. Otherwise, plan B would be to bike 14 miles to PNC Park, which no doubt would suck. Plan C would be to take a bus, but the closest bus stop is a half hour walk away, and I’ve never, ever taken a public bus before.